PureInsight | October 1, 2006
[PureInsight.org] (United Kingdom Fa Conference, 2006)
My name is Lili. I want to share some of my understanding and thoughts
that I had whilst a few practitioners and I were doing the truth
clarifying on Downing Street, after the exposé of the organ harvesting
incidents.
After I heard about the incident, I had the thought of going to Downing
Street straight away. In those two months time, I felt my XinXing had
improved dramatically throughout the beginning to the end of the
activities. Although I couldn't tell much difference on the surface,
but inside, it's two different worlds. In that period of time, I'd get
many new understandings every day and the state of my cultivation was
very good too. Some of the fellow practitioners said that it must be
really hard to keep going to Downing Street every day, but I didn't
look at it that way. In fact, quite the opposite, I felt the happiness
of being more involved with the Fa.
In the process of cultivation, everyone has his or her own path and
understanding. At the time, all the fellow practitioners understood the
Downing Street situation differently too. As I spent more time at
Downing Street, the more I realised the importance of it.
To start from the beginning, Downing Street is the place where most of
the British officials work. As a Chinese practitioner, I didn't know
about this very clearly. Our petition place was right opposite No. 10,
the Prime Minister's house, therefore we hung our banners opposite the
Prime Minister's house. Later, I realised that next door to the
Prime Minister's house is Parliament, which often has many government
officials in and out. Also, there was a person who told me that this
area gathers thousands of members of Parliament, ministers and high
officials. So I hung about 20 more banners towards the direction of
Parliament. It was a long display!
Also, because we are situated in London, it requires quite a few people
for the truth clarifying activities. During the week, most of the
practitioners needed to go to work, or college, and the availability of
the people who can keep going to Downing Street was very limited. At
the beginning, we sometimes only had two or three people who could go.
One day the police didn't put any railings up, so we couldn't put any
banners up, then we found out that it was because we didn't have enough
people doing the petitions. At least four or five people doing it are
required for them to put up the railings. I realised that Master
was trying to tell us that Downing Street is different from China Town,
where one person could do petitions alone. Downing Street is the heart
of Great Britain, and so needs more attention and more power from Dafa
practitioners, no matter whether you look at it from other dimensions
or from this human society's surface. After that, we made sure to keep
at the least four people there. Normally we have a practitioner
couple who take turns every day, a western practitioner, a new
practitioner, and me with my daughter.
The practitioner couple took turns outside the Chinese Embassy every
Wednesday and then went to Downing Street to do HongFa. There were a
few days when one practitioner told me her legs were hurting very
badly. But she realised that Downing Street is too important, like
ZhongNanHai in China, so she would get there even if it meant she had
to crawl. I was moved by that.
Also, when we first started on Downing Street, all the passing by
officials looked uninterested and many of them wouldn't accept our
leaflets. I thought although we were always doing truth-clarifying work
but it obviously wasn't enough. The CCP would also hand out some stuff
that insults us, so many people were still not clear what Falun Gong
is. That was a problem on one hand, showing that there was more truth
clarifying work needing to be done there. I also think that I had
issues with my own thoughts and felt we were asking them to help us.
With us showing up there day after day, with our XinXing improvement,
the changes on Downing Street were enormous. Master told us in
"Teaching the Fa at the Fa Conference at the U.S. Capital": "People
take actively doing things to be cultivation, and they take preserving
religious formats to be cultivation. Actually, gods don't place any
importance on those things. They only consider the improvement of
people's minds important, for that is true improvement."
At the time, the practitioners who were there needed to remind each
other that we were there to cultivate, not working, and so we needed to
demand strictly the best of ourselves at all times.
We all had things in common, like initiative and a tacit understanding.
Tony would be there very early every morning, and as soon as he got
there, he started hanging the banners. Sometimes he bought water for
everyone and looked after everyone. Shu Huiwen doesn't speak English,
but she was always handing out most of the leaflets. One day she got
eight pages, hundreds, of signatures. As for a new practitioner, in a
week he spent one day outside of the Chinese Embassy and the other four
days at Downing Street. At the beginning, he thought he didn't know how
to hang the banners. Later, if he got there early he'd start hanging
the banners and he was gaining more and more initiative.
Then I had realised that the reason we go to Downing Street wasn't
asking them to do anything for us, but for our compassion. Although
they are government officials, ordinary people aren't capable of doing
anything about this situation, so we were saving them. I felt more and
more compassionate. My daughter was being very good, too. She was
always well-behaved when we were on Downing Street. Ssometimes she
wouldn't need any milk for more than four hours.
In that environment, the passing-by officials become more and more
friendly and wanting to accept our handouts. The number of people who
signed the petition sheet was increasing too. They were not only just
the staff in the buildings, but also lawyers, ground force officers,
administrative staff and nobility. The interesting thing is I do not
know many celebrities in Britain, but once Tony told me that one of the
quite famous ministers had accepted our handout.
It's well known that the policemen who are on duty rarely sign
anything, but on Downing Street, we had at least seven or eight
policemen who wanted to sign. One day when we were doing truth
clarification in Downing Street, near the end, two new policemen came.
One asked the other what Falun Gong is, and said that Falun Gong is not
good and the other one told him that Falun Gong is good. He said, "Look
at their banners, it tells you to be truthful, compassionate and
endure, so it's good". The first policeman took a good look at the
banner and our practitioners, and then said, "Oh, Falun Gong is good".
Then we knew this being had been saved with that change of mind.
During the two months we were on Downing Street, we had a lot of
contact with the policemen there. After a while, they began to know us
as nice people, and trust us. At the beginning, they would come and
check every now and again, and then they just left us to it. Once,
there was a group of people doing a petition on Downing Street. I
thought we could spare some space for them. I just started to loosen
the banners, but a policeman came over and said, "No rush, let's see
first, they may not need much space."
When the two months came to an end on Downing Street, we actually still
wanted to carry on doing it. However, the local police said that
Parliament was just about to break for their holiday, so it would be
better for us to do it after September when the holidays end. Also,
during that period of time, we had neglected taking care of our
families and it was necessary to readjust a little. So we stopped then.
I still have some thoughts I want share with everybody about whether or
not we should continue in September.
As for Downing Street, I think if everyone thinks we should keep doing
truth clarifying there, we should all support with righteous thoughts,
and then we can do it. Downing Street gathers about 1100 MPs,
Ministers, and is almost the head and heart of the United Kingdom. As
we know, if one MP supports us, this means all his supporters are
saved! Britain has more than 600 MPs and some other areas only have
about 100 where some of our practitioners are, so how to cover the
others and tell them the truth has always been a tough problem.
However, most of these 600 MPs work in Downing Street during the week
days, and will go back to their area at the weekends. Also, all the
reporters from major media go to Downing Street every day to do
interviews. So wouldn't it be very important that we let them see us
there every day, and see the information we are trying to pass on?
During this period of time, I think we still haven't fully understood
the situation of doing petitions and truth clarification in Downing
Street, or perhaps we haven't had a deep enough discussion about this.
It shows when there was a lack of practitioners there. Some
practitioners go there for one or two days, but more often there would
be just three old folks and me with my daughter. But we very much
treasure the opportunity and environment that Master has given us to
cultivate in, and we tried our best to do it. However, if we look at it
from the official's point of view in Downing Street, it looks like all
we have is a few old folk and women with children as Falun Gong
practitioners. I think if more practitioners could join in and spare
some time to support our project in Downing Street, even just sending
righteous thoughts, we would have a very good and righteous environment
there.
I have a very limited ability of writing and expressing myself, and
with many things I did not go into detail, so if there's anything
lacking, I hope I can be corrected.
